Conservation Northwest updates
Dave Heflick Conservation associate,
dheflick@conservationnw.org
Collaborative Forest restoration
Fierce competition
ends well
The Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition and
Colville National Forest last year successfully landed nearly
a million dollars to begin restoration work under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.
Competition for the program was fierce, with only a handful of national forests across the country getting the nod.
Gaining the million dollar funding is a testament to the effectiveness of Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition and
its proven track record of moving projects forward on the
Colville National Forest.
The forest has now received funding for a second year of
restoration work under this national restoration program.
Working together, the Forest Service and the Coalition have
completed a draft program of work for 2013 that includes culvert replacements, habitat restoration, road decommissioning,
and fuels-reduction work.
Forester Derek Churchill, former Conservation Northwest
staff member, is under contract with us to work with the coalition and the Forest Service to implement a landscape evaluation
for the first project in northeast Washington to be completely
planned, analyzed, and carried out under the collaborative restoration program guidelines. Preliminary work on the evaluation is underway right now. The pace will pick up dramatically
as spring ushers in the 2013 summer-fall field season.
Looking back, virtually all the restoration in the 2012
work plan has been successfully completed. The projects
benefit fish and wildlife habitat, reflecting four miles of road
decommissioning, four miles of fish habitat added to the
upper reaches of Pierre Creek through replacement of a fishblocking culvert, 100 miles of trail restoration, and 182 miles
of road work to reduce harm to watershed health.
The new culvert replaces a long-standing fish-blocking culvert, restoring habitat connectivity between Pierre Lake—a
popular fishing spot in northeast Washington State containing trout, kokanee, and large-mouth bass—and more than five
miles of stream north of the lake.
Conservation Northwest, Northeast Washington Forestry
Coalition, and the Colville National Forest are honored to
be nationally recognized for the quality of their collaborative
work and record of successful implementation on the ground.
In these budget-crunching times, this national restoration
funding helps defuse cutbacks affecting national forests across
the country that have their collaborative act together.
Keeping the Northwest wild
Colville National Forest © Eric Zamora
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
highlighted the collaborative work on the
Colville National Forest as a "model for
the nation." Last year, a million dollars for
restoration in the Columbia Highlands puts
those kudos into practice on the ground.
Kokanee (land-locked sockeye) benefit from reconnected habitat.
© Graham Owen
Spring-Summer 2013
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